On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 12:40 PM, Ronald Frazier <ron at ronfrazier.net> wrote:
>>http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/Product.aspx?C=1319&ID=1426>> I have that case and it is really nice as far as construction, layout,
> design, etc. The exhaust fans in back are a bit small and thus noisier
> than your typical 80mm or 120mm fans (I modified the wiring on mine to
> run them at a lower voltage, thus quieter).
>> As far as the LCD, that's an iMon display (and it is the LCD version,
> not the VFD), and theres a lot to say about it. On the upside, it is a
> pretty cool layout for the display with all the icons, progress bars,
> ability to display arbitrary graphics in the center, etc. On the
> downside, I find the contrast of the display is kind of sucky (as you
> brighten up the text, the background also brightens too much), and
> from 6-10 feet away sitting down, I find it very difficult to read the
> text that is on it.
I've found the same. The iMON VFD, while less fancy (doesn't have all
the icons and whatnot) has far better contrast than the LCD. (I have
both).
> As far as support goes, there is no official support or even protocol
> documentation from soundgraph. When I first bought mine (about 2 years
> ago) people had reverse engineered it and written lirc patches to
> support it, but then soundgraph released a new version with the exact
> same functionality but different internal workings, so the device had
> to be re-reverse engineered and the patches be rewritten to support
> the new version as well. Those patches have made it into the main lirc
> tree about a year ago.
>> As far as the remote support goes, it is a windows media center style
> remote, which means that although you can use the included remote in
> linux, and the IR receiver may work with other windows media center
> style remotes (likely but I can't promise), it most certainly will not
> work with all remotes (of the dozen or so remotes I own, the included
> one is the only one it works with). So if you have a preferred remote
> that you already like (as I do), you may need an external IR receiver.
> That's the path I had to take, since I'm not very thrilled with the
> layout of the included iMon PAD remote (it has a lot of functionality,
> but the organization isn't super convenient for use, IMHO).
Yeah, the iMON devices do IR decoding in hardware. Early versions (usb
device ID 0x15c2:0xffdc) support only the native iMON IR protocol
(which I believe is an RC5 variant) *or* the Windows MCE IR protocol
(which is RC-6). Newer models can be switched on the fly between the
two, but only support one or the other at a time, not both. Any
universal that can be programmed as either the iMON remote or as an
MCE remote can be used with these receivers -- I use a Logitech
Harmony 880 programmed with an Antec Veris profile from their library,
iirc (the Antec Veris stuff is all just rebadged SoundGraph iMON
hardware).
> As far as the buttons and volume knob on the front panel, those too
> function through lirc as regular buttons, so you can do anything with
> them that you could do with a remote.
Actually... Going forward, there is no dependency on lirc any more,
the imon devices are handled via a pure input layer driver, which is
about to be pulled into kernel 2.6.35. So all the buttons Just Work
right out of the box, though MythTV lacks proper input layer support
at this time (fixing that is on the TODO list), so I actually have
lirc grab the input device and translate the input keys into lirc
keys.
> However, if you wanted some sort
> of fancier interface where the buttons bring up status info on the LCD
> or something, you would need a custom application to do that.
>> As far as tying the LCD into mythtv, when I first got involved, it was
> just supported as a generic LCD, which meant you got no advantage of
> using the icons and such. At one point, I though I recall reading in
> the forum here that somebody had made a patch which was supposed to
> add support for the icons, but I never looked into it so I don't know
> where that went.
It got committed. I wasn't the original author, but I updated the
patch and committed it a while back. Its far from 100% complete as far
as support for all icons, but its a decent start.
> I was working on my own custom application, and I had
> released a working initial version and was close to releasing an
> update, but then I got sidetracked, and then myth 0.22 came out and my
> app stopped working reliably with it, and with all the other problems
> (limited IR support and poor readability from a distance) I sort of
> lost the motivation to fix it when it didn't turn out to be a simple
> fix.
I'm still using an iMON VFD in my SilverStone HTPC case, but its
definitely not quite as good as an mce transceiver for IR reception.
--
Jarod Wilson
jarod at wilsonet.com